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Just when I think I have learned the way to Live
by angelic_magic at 10/1/2009 2:18:08 PM
This blog title is taken from a quote from Hugh Prather's Book "Notes to Myself"
I remember my first Hugh Prather book. My friend from high school was very into him and she shared her love of his words with me. We had a very strange friendship, we never stayed in touch much after HS and although I even contacted her mother to get her name and address. I still never took the time to contact her. We just weren’t “life long” friends I guess, since she never contacted me either.
But we were friends back then and Hugh was our “guru” to live by.
She loved words as much as I did. We spent many pages of paper writing.
I cherished all writing and so I have all of my notes from friends in HS, as well as my diaries,and other pages that were written through out my life.
The place I keep these cherished papers in, is a hope chest that once belonged to my grandma.
I feel my words are my “hope” so what better place to put them.
Every once in awhile I take a trip down memory lane and open my hope chest,
in there are my words.
All of them.
Every word I put to paper is in that chest.
Since we tended to use the same pages when writing back to each other..I got to keep both ends of the written conversation.
Of course we critiqued each other’s work of words back then. But the most memorable thing I remember is our arguments. I remember we clashed alot(which is why we didn’t seem to have what it takes to make a friendship last I guess) We always did our arguments on paper, in our letters to each other and that’s where Hugh Prather enters the picture. We used his words, changed for whatever the moment called for.
We argued with youthful logic. Hugh’s words made sense to us, he was wise and those words fit right into our world. We might have changed them a bit to fit whatever was happening in our lives that day. That is one thing we did have in common....the love of words.making them come alive for us.
”Fears, indecision, and frustration feed on words. Without words they usually stop. . . . Words are at times good for looking back, but they are confining when I need to act in the present. It’s not that we fear the place of darkness but that we don’t think we are worth the effort to find the place of light.”
I read that quote and it takes me back to those days of my youth. I smile thinking about how we were so serious in our endeavors to get the other person to see things the way we saw them.
"My trouble is I analyze life instead of live it."
We used that one alot! We were both guilty of over analyzing and perhaps in a way those words helped us grow a bit even then.
"Negative feedback is better then none. I would rather have a man hate me than overlook me. As long as he hates me I make a difference.”
Of course this one made perfect sense when we were very upset with each other.
"We mistakenly believe
that our sense of self-worth
comes from how we compare to others,
and that to see them as innocent
would reflect badly on us.”
How wonderful that we could take such thought provoking words and make them fit into our young girl lives. How amazing that all these years later,words still hold such an impact in my life.
“Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes and I am left the same. The more things change the more I am the same. I am what I started with, and when it is all over I will be all that is left of me.”
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